EXCLUSIVE: INSIDE DETAILS OF HOW NIGERIAN GOVT. DETAINED BINANCE EXECUTIVES

One of the two detained Binance executives is an American, while the other is British-Pakistani.

The Nigerian government has detained two executives of the Binance crypto exchange platform amid efforts to stabilise the nation’s foreign exchange market and salvage the value of the local currency.

Sources with details of the matter told this newspaper earlier in the week that the two executives of the online platform arrived in Nigeria on Sunday to negotiate with the government amid the crackdown.

On Monday afternoon, the executives met with top cyber security officials and other investigators from the office of the National Security Adviser to discuss the various areas of contention.

However, the meetings were deadlocked as Binance officials declined to meet some of the demands put forward by the Nigerian government.

They were also accused of operating a business worth billions without the requisite registrations and documentation.

According to sources who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday evening, the Nigerian authorities requested Binance executives to provide data relating to transactions involving the Nigerian Naira on the Binance platform in the last seven years. They also demanded that some other data relating to Nigeria be deleted from the Binance platform.

However, the Binance executives insisted that they should be taken to their respective countries’ embassies before they could comply.

While the full identities of the two Binance executives remain sketchy as of press time Wednesday night, PREMIUM TIMES gathered that one of them is an American and the other a British-Pakistani.

The Nigerian government also obtained a court warrant to detain the officials for at least twelve days in the first instance.

A source with knowledge of the matter told PREMIUM TIMES that the investigation was consequently taken over by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) while the two executives were detained at a guest house near the Office of the National Security Adviser.

The EFCC did not immediately respond to PREMIUM TIMES’ enquiries seeking clarity about the issue Wednesday night. Dele Oyewale, the spokesperson of the commission, told this newspaper to call back later.

Meanwhile, indications emerged Wednesday that Binance disabled its peer-to-peer function for Nigerian users to its platform.

More popularly known as P2P, the platform allows users, buyers and sellers to trade without third-party interference and became popular among Nigerians when the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari banned cryptocurrency in 2021.

With the disabling of the P2P platform for Nigerian users, it remains unclear whether Nigerians would still be able to trade on the Binance platform.

Binance officials did not immediately respond to enquiries on the matter Wednesday as emails sent to their communication unit were not responded to.

“In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26 billion has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” Olayemi Cardoso, the CBN governor, said.

The apex bank governor also hinted that there is a collaboration among government agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Police, and the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) to address such illicit financial activities.